The Dangers of the Dotted Line

National Signing Day. It’s a day set aside for high school student-athletes to announce which college they’ve chosen to play for the coming fall. What should simply be a day of celebration for the accomplishments of these young guys who have demonstrated the talent needed to move to the next level in their sport has devolved into a media circus that leaves a trail of unnecessarily inflated egos and a misunderstanding of the purpose of college in its wake.

 I’m not saying these kids aren’t talented; far from it, actually. They are amazing examples of athleticism, speed, and strength. They’re likely 3-year starters (maybe even 4-year) for their respective football teams, and they’re used to having newspaper articles regularly written about them, doing interviews with the local news station, and being the all-around “big man on campus.” Their feats in high school football have earned them this recognition; they deserve the right to have a little fanfare when announcing their plans for college.

 Unfortunately, the last few years have turned National Signing Day into a media blitz that bombards these teenagers with press conferences, photo opportunities, and big lead-ins to their ultimate announcement. The number of top recruits who now hold national press conferences complete with a pep rally attended by the whole school is growing. One of the biggest issues with the first Wednesday in February is that it can lead these kids to believe that same kind of hype is going to follow them all the way to Alabama, LSU, or Florida State. And in reality, can we blame them for thinking that way? Not really; the media fuels the fire and fans pour gasoline on top by buying into it. In some way, we’re complicit in the way the general “baseline” ego measurement of college athletes has risen drastically in the past 3-4 years.

 These student-athletes have spent at least the last nine months (or more) being courted by college coaches who come into their living rooms and “sell” their programs. Come play for Nick Saban; we’re defending a national title and your skills could help take the Tide to a repeat. Come play for Mack Brown; there’s a tradition of Longhorns excellence that we want you to be a part of. Come play for Urban Meyer; we’re moving the Buckeye program forward and we think you could help us rebuild this team. How does a 17-18 year old boy come out of those home visits with a healthy sense of where his place will be on the team that fall?

 That’s not to say he won’t have a chance to contribute to Fighting Irish success; I’m certain he will. Many of them will. But for a vast majority of these recruits, that chance won’t come until their sophomore year, maybe even their junior year, depending upon their position and the team’s roster depth. Most of these student-athletes will spend a good portion of their collegiate careers on the sidelines, finding their way into a few plays every couple of quarters, or into games that are so far gone fans are leaving the stadium early to beat traffic.

 Let’s face it: FBS college football rosters can have as many as 105 players listed. 85 of those can be scholarship players; in other words, around 85 guys on any given college football team were recruited to some degree by that school. Yet there are only 22 starters on offense and defense, and maybe 8-10 more guys who might be 3^rd down or goal line-stand players. That math doesn’t work out in favor of the recruit. Much of that “we need you at Oklahoma,” or “you’d look good in Michigan blue,” gets lost in the crunch of pads worn by the practice squad.

 That actuality isn’t often shared with top recruits, though; or, if it is, it gets overlooked when the national media caters to these teens by showing up at their high school gym, waiting with bated breath to see which cap each kid is going to pick up. Flashes of cameras, cheering crowds, reporters clamoring…it’s no wonder, as Kirk Herbstreit said, that these players show up thinking they’re “bigger than the program.” And it gets progressively worse each year; more teens are getting press conferences, and the size of these events gets bigger. Students show up on their chosen campus that fall assuming their “big man” stature carries over before getting hit with the harsh reality that they’re small fish in a big pond now. They’re looking at time on the bench, and many have a hard time swallowing the idea that the unwritten terms and conditions of their letters of intent are that dues are owed, payable only in games spent riding the pine.

 We’re aware that the goal of recruiting is to land as many top high school football players as possible as a means to strengthen a college program and bring success. As college football fans, we hope our favorite teams get the best recruiting class possible. Interestingly (or maybe ironically, depending upon your view of the recruiting process), the acquisition of 4- and 5-star recruits doesn’t actually have the impact on a program that we might think it would. According to an article by Peter Keating in the most recent ESPN The Magazine, a recent study done by Winthrop Intelligence ran the numbers (over 100 different statistical categories) on every recruiting class from 2006 to 2010 (that’s more than 11,000 football players), and discovered that there is “no correlation between the number of recruits with more than three stars on an FBS team and its subsequent winning percentages.”

 Hold on, you’re telling me what now?

 Exactly; it’s not enough that there’s never a guarantee that top quality recruits will equal on-field success. There’s actually no real connection at all. Keating goes on to talk about reasons for this lack of association, ranging from when athletes peak physically to the impact of coaching, and it makes sense. High school success may not translate to college success if for no other reasons than it’s a new coach, a new system, and the kid has moved away from home for the first time. So all those miles of traveling and hours sitting on couches in homes across the country really might not be as worth the over-the-top effort now put in by college coaches. Which, in turn, means that the insanity of National Signing Day is definitely not worth all the added publicity and hype of the past few years.

 The other big problem with National Signing Day? The perception that college is meant to simply be a stepping stone to the NFL. Again, I’m not implying that every college football recruit has his sights set on playing professionally; many of them go on to have success in their chosen field of study. Unfortunately, though, with all this praise and attention being given to teenage boys, it’s no wonder that a lot of them assume they will go on to play at the next level. Hell, if Les Miles is taking the time to visit my house and tell me that the Tigers need me in Baton Rouge, I must be the next coming of Jerry Rice or Ray Lewis, right?

 Wrong. If the odds of first-year playing time for the average recruit are as unfavorable as they are, the odds of the average college football player getting drafted into the NFL are even worse. Yet all the attention paid to National Signing Day gives these recruits the idea that signing a letter of intent is just one step removed from signing a rookie contract, and playing the requisite three years in college is just one pit stop on the way to a Super Bowl ring. Again, while the media and fans aren’t the only ones at fault, we are partly to blame for this mindset. Because the media devotes so much time to National Signing Day (ESPN especially), fans get caught up in the whirlwind. All of this adds up to recruits assuming they’re going to be their future programs’ saving graces.

 Going to college is not done as a means to fulfill the basic requirements needed in order to enter the NFL Draft. Going to college is a means to fulfill the requirements needed in order to earn a degree; heaven forbid a player attain that ultimate goal of getting drafted only to find himself injured and unable to play any longer. Without a completed education, what is there for him to fall back on for a sense of stability? There are a lot of football programs that work hard to ensure their players are attending class and doing well; there are just as many (sometimes more, it seems) that will do everything they can (NCAA-compliant or not) to make sure their players are sitting pretty in the gradebook so they’re available on Saturday. It’s these second type of programs that really perpetuate this notion of college football being more important than college classes. When we forget that these kids are student-athletes and not just athletes, it’s far easier for them to forget it too.

 So let’s dial down the ferocity of National Signing Day. Cut out the big press conferences and interviews with ESPN; keep the media involvement to a restrained and logical level and refocus these amazingly talented kids on both reality and school. Major playing time, and especially starting, isn’t going to come right away (or at all for a lot of players), and this time in their lives is meant to be fun, yes, but it’s also meant to be a learning experience, both on the field and in the classroom.